The Weekly Update (31/8/2014)

In the weekly update, I bring you what I’ve been doing throughout Monday to Sunday in regards to technology, computers and more with links to tutorials and guides.

You will also find what I’m currently interested in for the following weeks. If something doesn’t have a link, I may cover it myself in the future because I couldn’t find much about it online.

Weekly Update 31/8/2014

Pastebin

I was looking for a good pastebin VM and found quite a few on the Internet. The reason for a pastebin is to easily copy and paste a lot of scripts into virtual machines when I can’t SSH or Remote Desktop into them. I initially went with Hastebin but did not like how I couldn’t retrieve old pastes as it was made with ‘disposable’ in mind. Instead I’ve went with Stikked which is very customisable in regards to its configuration and settings for your pastes.

NZBDrone

I’ve moved to NZBDrone from Sickbeard. Sickbeard wouldn’t pick up on the latest Legend of Korra episodes but could download other things just fine. Drone picked up the new episodes just fine. The only thing I need to do is add SSL certificates to it - not necessary, but when I put the site on the Internet it will matter.

New Programs

Clover - Tabbed Windows Explorer. Didn’t find it useful from thinking about it but it’s not that bad actually.

SpaceSniffer- a really good overview of what the biggest folders on my disks are so I can delete them. My laptop had 15 GB of remaining space left but now it has 40 GB after discovering a lot of things taking up space.

What I’m interested in at the moment

VMware vCenter Operations Management (vCOps) is something we use at work to monitor virtual machines. A really good feature of it is to calculate the best amount of CPU and memory a virtual machine really needs to optimise it. I have about 10GB of RAM left in my ESXi server so it could really help. The downside? I’ll need 16GB of RAM just to run it (4GB for the workaround)

Syslog and/or SNMP host. A lot of hosts have an option to send logs to a dedicated SNMP server. This might be something good to learn.

WiFi enabled lightbulb (LIFX) made by an Australian company. I’ve always wanted to dabble in putting technology in all parts of home life (home automation is something I really want to look into). Costs about $129 from Harvey Norman as well. I have the Edison screw version if anyone wants to buy me one…